Sony LMD1410 14 Inch LCD Professional Video Monitor

Having owned and used two of these Sony's for a couple of years in a professional video production setting, I'd recommend the LMD-series with one exception: poor audio design.

With Sony's long-standing reputation as a leader in audio products, I was both surprised and disappointed that it would put out a professional grade, state of the art TV monitor with just MONAURAL audio jacks, and a very poor (inadequate) amplifier/speaker combination. If you're going to have an audio in/out loop thru for each source, why not have stereo in/outs?

Professional VTRs recordings have often used "narration only" on one audio track and music bed or "nat sound" on the other, so only having one track go thru the cue monitor can be confusing.

I use this model constantly in cueing and playback of DVD & tape/DVR segments for hotel, theatre, and concert events; and I almost always have to bring a separate Fostex or Anchor powered monitor speaker to be able to hear clearly whatever source I am cueing or playing. There just isn't much volume behind the built-in speaker. And some audio sources overload the front end of the built in amp, giving the impression of a distorted source material.

I have Pentium-90 (i.e., OLD!) laptops that have better built-in volume and audio quality than this Sony.

Apart from sound, the video features (both in 4:3 and 16:9, and underscan modes) are everything a video pro could ask for. It's nice having A/B switching between two composite inputs (as well as a separate button to switch to a component/RGB third source), to minimize the number of monitors I need on a setup. And having S-video (Y/C mini-DIN) loop thru on the composite input (in addition to BNC) saves cabling and D/A patching on S-video sources. NTSC and PAL systems are supported in the menu.

A P-I-P (picture in picture window) option would have been nice (like on my home Sony, which even has an A/B swap between the PIP windows).

Rack-mount bracket options and standard VESA (100mm) mounting holes (for wall or arm mount), round out the versatility for the end-user, in addition to the stock table stand.

Even though this model is now discontinued (2010), it can still be found at various Sony dealers, and here on Amazon.com. The replacement model is the LMD-1530W (which is widescreen format).